madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[namaiki]

madshi, for ~24fps on ~60Hz (fixed panel), I am still experiencing an issue where the video can look perfectly smooth, but if I seek and re-play the same part, it will be juddery (always a constant pattern) looking.

Is there be anything that I can do?

[pankov]

Originally Posted by madshi

Yes, I'm aware of the issue. Funny thing is that madVR behaves no different in both cases. So it seems that ZP behaves differently if you load the video in fullscreen mode. I'll try to fix that problem, but I'm not sure if I can. It's possible that Blight might have to change something. But don't contact him about that just yet. Let me first try to fix it in madVR.

OK. We are eagerly waiting for a fix.

Originally Posted by madshi

If, however, you can't get clocks matched well enough, then probably Reclock's resampling still make sense for every movie.

How close is "well enough"? I tried to calculate how long it will take before we need to delay a frame if my display is at 23.9765 and the movie is 23.976 but I'm not sure when madVR will be forced to delay it ... is when we reach half the frame time or it will try to keep up till the moment it's not possible any more ... and what about 23.976@24.000? And this brings an old question - is better to use the real cinema refresh rate (24.000) or use the special 1001/1000 alteration.

Originally Posted by madshi

As said before, if another window is covering madVR, there would probably be flickering, if I don't go out of exclusive mode.

... well I have two arguments that oppose your statement.
1. As I said before we have a prove (DVBViewer's exclusive mode) that there is way to be "on top" of everything and no other window can show up over the rendered picture. And there is absolutely no flickering in this case.
2. Personally if I have to live with any kind of flickering I'd prefer the flickering to be in a small part of the screen than the whole screen as that's the case when going out and into exclusive mode. Usually the offending windows are some notifications (mail, instant messengers, volume OSD (OS's not player's)) that pop up during playback and disappear quickly afterward. I think ... if possible at all ... it will be great if you can distinguish between player's windows and windows from other applications and wait ... let's say 5 seconds ... before madVR goes out of exclusive mode if the offending window is not from the player.

[iSunrise]

Originally Posted by madshi

JFMI: Why do you use Powerstrip instead of defining custom timings? With nVidia at least you should be able to define a custom output mode which exactly matches your Powerstrip timings. Not sure if it's possible with ATI, though

Just FYI: There are also a lot of potential problems if you have to rely on the NVIDIA control panel. For some users and specific cases setting the timing manually might work, for others it doesn´t, for some driver revisions it works, for others it doesn´t, etc. It´s for these reasons that a lot of users are prefering Powerstrip, because it´s extremely reliable (if your graphics card is supported).

Like, in my case, the problem that i can´t get rid of is that after setting a custom timing, the NVIDIA control panel simply refuses to show the just configured timing (after I hit apply in the custom mode window) in the "Resolution" list, which means i cannot select it and "apply" it afterwards. It only shows the defaults, which are 59Hz or 60Hz, which is completely useless, since there already are PC modes with exactly those timings. Also, the NVIDIA control panel has some annoying bugs, e.g. on the "Adjust desktop size and position" tab, when switching to something lower than your native resolution, the NVIDIA driver panel just ignores what you just set it to and resets either to "Use NVIDIA scaling" or "Use my display´s built in scaling", instead of "Do not scale" (which is my prefered setting).

On the other hand, with PowerStrip, I can select every timing available for my display, ranging from 23.75-30.5 Hz to 47.5-61 Hz, I can set every resolution (non-native, unscaled) and it works perfectly and reliably in combination with madVR and every NVIDIA driver I have updated to in the last months.

With PowerStrip, you are completely independant of the provided drivers, when it comes to these adjustments, and with madVR, you are also completely independant of driver bugs, when it comes to image quality in videos/movies.

Hopefully, with coming madVR revisions, there is a way to read out the EDID data (DVI and HDMI) of the monitor and let madVR also have e.g. an "inf", where you can set your prefered timing according to the supplied "source fps". If this would be the case, madVR could also be completely independant of third party tools, but I´m just thinking out loud.

[6233638]

Originally Posted by pankov

And this brings an old question - is better to use the real cinema refresh rate (24.000) or use the special 1001/1000 alteration.

You are better to have reclock resample to 24.000, especially if you can upsample to 24/96 or higher.

I don't think it's possible to get 24/1.001 out of a PC video card. Even if you use the correct CEA timings you won't get it or 24.000000. (the timings are the same)

Originally Posted by iSunrise

Just FYI: There are also a lot of potential problems if you have to rely on the NVIDIA control panel. For some users and specific cases setting the timing manually might work, for others it doesn´t, for some driver revisions it works, for others it doesn´t, etc. It´s for these reasons that a lot of users are prefering Powerstrip, because it´s extremely reliable (if your graphics card is supported).

It worked perfectly in 186.86 and was broken for a while after that. The custom timings are now working correctly again, at least since the switch to 256.xx and up.

Originally Posted by iSunrise

Like, in my case, the problem that i can´t get rid of is that after setting a custom timing, the NVIDIA control panel simply refuses to show the just configured timing (after I hit apply in the custom mode window) in the "Resolution" list, which means i cannot select it and "apply" it afterwards. It only shows the defaults, which are 59Hz or 60Hz, which is completely useless, since there already are PC modes with exactly those timings.

I had this as well with my CRT in Windows 7. If you right click the desktop, go to change resolution, the advanced options and ‘list all modes’ you can select them. I don't know why this is. With my new TV on the same drivers I can select them from the Nvidia control panel no problem.

Out of interest, what kind of display are you using? I think it might be an issue with HDMI devices that are not 100% compliant.

[iSunrise]

Originally Posted by 6233638

It worked perfectly in 186.86 and was broken for a while after that. The custom timings are now working correctly again, at least since the switch to 256.xx and up.

Yes, I realized that since 256.xx some of the bugs are indeed fixed, that was one of the resons why I updated. But there´s always the uncertainty if that holds up for the next driver revisions.

Originally Posted by 6233638

I had this as well with my CRT in Windows 7. If you right click the desktop, go to change resolution, the advanced options and ‘list all modes’ you can select them. I don't know why this is. With my new TV on the same drivers I can select them from the Nvidia control panel no problem.

Out of interest, what kind of display are you using? I think it might be an issue with HDMI devices that are not 100% compliant.

You are a genius. It indeed works when doing it exactly like you suggested. Gonna need to test this further. I´m still not sure why it has to be this complicated. Thanks a lot for that, though!

EDIT: After further testing, the control panel won´t accept e.g. 29.970 or 23.976 ("Test failed. The mode "xxx" is not supported by your monitor."), even tough I can set both modes using PowerStrip.

Currently I´m using an EIZO CG243W, which is connected through the supplied DVI-D cable to an NVIDIA GTX 260´s first DVI-port. The NVIDIA control panel also shows up my monitor name correctly "EIZO CG243W", but I cannot get it to switch custom modes through the panel directly, no matter what I tried.

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by iSunrise

I´m still not sure why it has to be this complicated.

you can also make a dummy monitor .inf using pstrip, build it stating the max rate is 200Hz and you can choose whatever you want, whenever you want(DisplayChanger batches are handy).

I was forced to do it as my CRT EDID said the max refresh rate was 85Hz:

[desert.katz]

Hello, everyone!
Have some questions, mostly quality-based...
First of all, would like to report in about my DVD@madVR@win 7 experience. It's possible to watch DVDs if you install DScaler MPEG2 decoder+it's IVTC mod. As I was trying to open DVD, it (DScaler...) loaded up by accident (do not ask ) alongside ffdshow and the DVDs are working flawlessly with madVR!

Also, seems to me that 0.25 has the smoothest playback of all renderers. Could that be because of the 'exclusive fullscreen mode'? The madVR's seek bar is not working for me though (I have MPC-HC's D3D mode turned on - may that be the reason?)

But here are my questions...
1) Will there be implemented native DVD (problems with DVD Navigator@win7 mentioned earlier in this thread) support in madVR? That would be great because then it would be possible to use just ffdshow. Cuz, I'm worried if 'DScaler+ffdshow' doesn't somehow degrade the quality, because there is one more color space conversion (I'm unable to configure DScaler MPEG2 decoder - it outputs YUY and then ffdshow has to convert it to YV12).

2) Do I need to turn on or off the 3dlut option? (I don't use/don't know how to use gamut/gamma correction - so do I need 3dlut?)

3) Can you somehow easily explain differences between the timing models? 'Normal' is the only one working for me. It works great, but the other two gives me a big video/audio asynchronization (video too late/too soon)

4) Can you recommend anything on quality purpose. What I mean, is, madVR is with no doubts the best renderer there is. But what about other stuff? Like, decoders - is there any difference between, for example, ffdshow and CoreAVC or mpc-hc implemented filters other than performance? Color space conversions, deblocking, IVTC, etc. And what about players? I really don't understand much about how the video is becoming from a file to a picture on my monitor, but I'm all about quality, so I'm asking for your help.

P.S. My config
MPC-HC x32 + ffdshow + madVR (always the newest builds) + temporarily (<--- I hope so) also DScaler with it's IVTC mod (avsforum)
Win7 Ultimate x64 Aero on
ATI 4650
CRT@60Hz
madVR - 3dlut on, exclusive fullscreen mode on, upload frames in render thread, show seek bar, timing model - normal, 8 backbuffers, don't flush anything, all resizing set to lanzcos8

Looks great on my oldschool CRT

[iSunrise]

Originally Posted by leeperry

you can also make a dummy monitor .inf using pstrip, build it stating the max rate is 200Hz and you can choose whatever you want, whenever you want(DisplayChanger batches are handy).

I was forced to do it as my CRT EDID said the max refresh rate was 85Hz:

Already tried it, that´s how my pstrip created custom .inf looks:



But sadly, it didn´t really change the behaviour of the NVIDIA panel.

PS: Since I don´t want to derail this thread. If some of you have some further suggestions, could you send me a PM? That would be great. Thanks.

[Mark_A_W]

Originally Posted by 6233638

You are better to have reclock resample to 24.000, especially if you can upsample to 24/96 or higher.

I don't think it's possible to get 24/1.001 out of a PC video card. Even if you use the correct CEA timings you won't get it or 24.000000. (the timings are the same)

You are going to have to expand on this.

With Powerstrip there should be no problem getting 23.976hz, or a multiple thereof (I use 95.904hz).

[TinTime]

Originally Posted by Mark_A_W

You are going to have to expand on this.

With Powerstrip there should be no problem getting 24.976hz, or a multiple thereof (I use 95.904hz).

Same with Nvidia custom timings too (when they work). Thankfully I don't seem to have to fiddle with them any more - the default 24Hz refresh rate with my TV is reported as 24.000 by Reclock.

[6233638]

Originally Posted by desert.katz

Also, seems to me that 0.25 has the smoothest playback of all renderers. Could that be because of the 'exclusive fullscreen mode'? The madVR's seek bar is not working for me though (I have MPC-HC's D3D mode turned on - may that be the reason?)

You need to turn off D3D or else madVR won't use Fullscreen Exclusive, it will be Fullscreen Windowed.

Originally Posted by desert.katz

2) Do I need to turn on or off the 3dlut option? (I don't use/don't know how to use gamut/gamma correction - so do I need 3dlut?)

Leave the 3DLUT off unless you have created a custom LUT with yCMS.

Originally Posted by desert.katz

4) Can you recommend anything on quality purpose.

P.S. My config
all resizing set to lanzcos8

In my opinion, best quality is:
Luma upsampling: SoftCubic 50
Luma downsampling: Lanczos. I use 4, 8 is too slow. Not sure which is better.
Chroma upsampling: Bicubic 75

Lanczos only looks good for downsampling, it is horrible for upsampling. Lanczos 3 is best if you insist on using it to upsample. If you want one of the sharper upsamplers, I would use Spline32/64 instead.

SoftCubic50 looks best from my own testing though. It does not bring out compression artifacts like other upsampling does, and keeps aliasing to a minimum.

Originally Posted by Mark_A_W

You are going to have to expand on this.

With Powerstrip there should be no problem getting 23.976hz, or a multiple thereof (I use 95.904hz).

I can use the official timings to get "24/1.001", "24.000" or a multiple shown, but it does not measure exactly 24/1.001 or 24.000000 when you actually use it. (reclock or madVR's measurement, not seen a monitor that goes beyond two digits precision)

Here are the correct timings to use: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...66#post1318766

Edit: I am not meaning that it is an issue for smooth playback, but I would not recommend disabling resampling in reclock and forcing it to run at the original sample rate because the clock will not be perfect. Don't use its v-sync correction, but let it resample the audio. (preferably upsampled too) Some bluray is 24.000 on the disc anyway, its not all 24/1.001. Resampling everything to the proper 24.000, especially if you have PAL content, makes more sense.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by Nevilne

I have 8600m card on dell laptop. I'm able to select either 59 or 60 hz refresh rate in nvidia control panel.
When I use 60hz madvr produces a lot of dropped/delayed frames on videos with high framerate, but there are no drops/delays at 59 hz.
The osd shows around 59.75 hz at both settings. This is on any player with or without reclock. Any idea what could have caused this?

What is "a lot of"? How many drops per second or per minute?

Most content better fits to the 59 refresh rate. It's not really 59.000Hz, it's actually 60.000Hz / 1.001, which is about 59.940. It's just named "59" because the names usually don't use floating point and 59.940 is lower than 60.000.

Originally Posted by Nevilne

Also, is there a need to use reclock with madvr if I don't do playback speed change in reclock?

Depends on how well your audio/video clocks are matched. Also Reclock does kernel streaming or WSAPI rendering. But these things are complicated topics and are not directly related to madVR. So they don't really belong into this thread.

Originally Posted by namaiki

madshi, for ~24fps on ~60Hz (fixed panel), I am still experiencing an issue where the video can look perfectly smooth, but if I seek and re-play the same part, it will be juddery (always a constant pattern) looking.

Is there be anything that I can do?

Yes, but not anytime soon.

Originally Posted by pankov

I'm not sure when madVR will be forced to delay it ... is when we reach half the frame time or it will try to keep up till the moment it's not possible any more ...

What the current madVR version does is not what the "final" version will do. So it doesn't really help discussing that now.

Originally Posted by pankov

... well I have two arguments that oppose your statement.
1. As I said before we have a prove (DVBViewer's exclusive mode) that there is way to be "on top" of everything and no other window can show up over the rendered picture. And there is absolutely no flickering in this case.

That doesn't oppose my statement at all. I said that if another window is covering madVR's rendering window, there would probably be flickering. If DVBViewer doesn't flicker, then likely there's no other window covering it. No contradiction to what I said at all.

Originally Posted by pankov

2. Personally if I have to live with any kind of flickering I'd prefer the flickering to be in a small part of the screen than the whole screen

Oh, you prefer a constant never-going-away flickering in a small part of the screen over a full-screen flickering which is only visible for less than a second? That's weird...

Originally Posted by desert.katz

1) Will there be implemented native DVD (problems with DVD Navigator@win7 mentioned earlier in this thread) support in madVR?

Probably yes, sooner or later...

Originally Posted by desert.katz

3) Can you somehow easily explain differences between the timing models?

Simply use what works best for you.

[madshi]

madVR v0.26 released

http://madshi.net/madVR.zip

* fixed: windows on primary monitor were seen as covering secondary playback
* fixed: when starting in fullscreen mode, madVR's seek bar didn't work
* fixed: starting ZoomPlayer in fullscreen exclusive mode made problems
* when "maximizing" the media player, exclusive mode is activated at once now
* exclusive mode switch is now done after 3 seconds instead of 1 second
* while exclusive mode is active, media player window is made topmost now
* windowed tweak "timing model" is now used for exclusive mode, too
* changed Aero timing mode once again
* added forced OSD display "windowed" vs. "exclusive" when switching
* new interface allows media players to ask whether madVR is in exclusive mode

Known problems:
(1) Loading the video file on primary monitor, then moving the window to the secondary monitor confuses the automatic fullscreen exclusive mode.

Requests:
(1) Please report if there are any problems left, especially with automatic fullscreen exclusive mode. If you do still have problems, please report your GPU, OS, monitor setup (1 or 2 screens, playback on primary/secondary etc) and media player.
(2) Does anybody absolutely need the "aero" or "high refresh rate" timing models? If nobody says yes, I'll remove them next week and always use the "normal" refresh rate.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Originally Posted by madshi

Known problems:
(1) Loading the video file on primary monitor, then moving the window to the secondary monitor confuses the automatic fullscreen exclusive mode.

Would be great, if this could be fixed. Because of this I can use "fullscreen exclusive mode" for testing, but not for daily use yet.

Originally Posted by madshi

(2) Does anybody absolutely need the "aero" or "high refresh rate" timing models? If nobody says yes, I'll remove them next week and always use the "normal" refresh rate.

Yup. I have Aero enabled, so I use the "aero" setting. And it seems to work fine for me...

[madshi]

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

Would be great, if this could be fixed. Because of this I can use "fullscreen exclusive mode" for testing, but not for daily use yet.

It is on my to do list.

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

Yup. I have Aero enabled, so I use the "aero" setting. And it seems to work fine for me...

Ok, but do you actually *need* it? Could you please try if the "normal" timing model maybe works just as fine? I'd really like to get rid of the timing model option to make the settings dialog easier.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Originally Posted by madshi

Ok, but do you actually *need* it? Could you please try if the "normal" timing model maybe works just as fine? I'd really like to get rid of the timing model option to make the settings dialog easier.

Will do more testing. But wouldn't it be possible to detect Aero and use the Aero model automatically when Aero is on?

Or are there problems reported with Aero enabled + Aero model? (Didn't read the entire thread, it's just too long)

[madshi]

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

Or are there problems reported with Aero enabled + Aero model?

Yes, many people prefer using the "normal" timing model even for Aero rendering. From what I've seen, only very few people seem to use the "aero" timing model.

[pankov]

Originally Posted by madshi

I'm confused. madVR has always had the file version resource set properly!

I'm really sorry for having doubt in you
I just saw that the problem is only in Windows 7 - it doesn't show file version for .ax files !?!? What are they thinking in Microsoft? Why do they have to break such simple things that work perfectly well in XP

Originally Posted by madshi

What the current madVR version does is not what the "final" version will do. So it doesn't really help discussing that now.

OK can you just tell us if 0.001Hz or less of deviation from 23.976 will be OK so I don't have dropped/delayed frame in 2-3 hours movie?

Originally Posted by madshi

That doesn't oppose my statement at all. I said that if another window is covering madVR's rendering window, there would probably be flickering. If DVBViewer doesn't flicker, then likely there's no other window covering it. No contradiction to what I said at all.

OK, I see your point ... I guess. You say that the reason why there is no flickering with DVBViewer is because it's preventing other windows to go over it's rendered picture, right? Because my experience shows that there absolutely NO way to show any window over DVBViewer unlike the current madVR implementation with which any windows can cover madVR and produce flickering. Did I get it right now?

Originally Posted by madshi

Oh, you prefer a constant never-going-away flickering in a small part of the screen over a full-screen flickering which is only visible for less than a second? That's weird...

No, that's far from what I'm saying. If suppose it's not possible to prevent other windows to go on top of madVR in case of a temporary pop up window I'd prefer to have a small flickering for up to 5 seconds (an exemplary timeout I mentioned in my previous post) than a whole screen blinking in both transitions out of exclusive and back to exclusive if the other window disappeared. And after that time if the window didn't disappear and is still trying to be visible madVR should go out of exclusive mode. If it disappeared then everything should continue as it was - just with a small glitch.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by pankov

OK can you just tell us if 0.001ms or less of deviation from 23.976 will be OK so I don't have dropped/delayed frame in 2-3 hours movie?

I don't know which requirements the "final" madVR version will have to not drop/delay any frames.

Originally Posted by pankov

Because my experience shows that there absolutely NO way to show any window over DVBViewer unlike the current madVR implementation with which any windows can cover madVR and produce flickering. Did I get it right now?

More or less.

ZoomPlayer's main window is not "topmost", while MPC HC's main window is, when they go (windowed) fullscreen. Maybe that's why you've seen many windows covering ZP. But that's not really madVR's fault. Anyway, madVR v0.26 now hacks the media player to be "topmost", as long as exclusive mode is active. That may improve the situation for you.

Originally Posted by pankov

If suppose it's not possible to prevent other windows to go on top of madVR in case of a temporary pop up window I'd prefer to have a small flickering for up to 5 seconds (an exemplary timeout I mentioned in my previous post) than a whole screen blinking in both transitions out of exclusive and back to exclusive if the other window disappeared. And after that time if the window didn't disappear and is still trying to be visible madVR should go out of exclusive mode. If it disappeared then everything should continue as it was - just with a small glitch.

Sorry, but no, I will not implement such a thing.

[nijiko]

When will release a decreasing window version? ......
Is it possible? ......